The Nato Communications and Information (NCI) Agency has awarded Airbus a €40 million ($46.2 million) contract for the delivery of the first phase of the new Nato Communications Infrastructure Project.

The contract also includes options for future phases of the project, worth up to €50 million ($57.8 million).

The Nato Communications Infrastructure project will replace a major part of the Nato General Communications System (NGCS), involving 72 Nato sites. It will provide a major upgrade of wide area network protected IP communications across the Nato command structure, Nato headquarters and Nato points of presence in member nations.  

The project covers the delivery of upgraded IP access and transport services across different security classifications with significantly increased capacity, quality of service and traffic engineering capabilities. It also covers Nato unclassified voice services through the replacement of old telephony switches by voice over IP telephony at 25 sites.  

The design review is estimated to be completed in December 2018 while the first phase of implementation should be completed by the end of 2019.  

The Nato Communications Infrastructure Project, together with the IT Modernisation Project and the Enterprise Nato Public Key Infrastructure Project, is part of the wider IT Modernisation Programme which aims to transform Nato's static IT infrastructure into a homogeneous enterprise. It will include customer-funded service delivery systems, with a common service management and control layer, increased levels of virtualisation, modern cloud technology, and appropriate resilience mechanisms.